Broken Seashell
by WargishBoromirFan
Summary: Finduilas, on the edge of death, thinks back to happier times. In the end, it all goes back to the sea... Another 50lyrics challengefic. Rating for brief innuendo.


**Title:** Broken Seashell  
**Fandom:** LotR  
**Characters:** Finduilas, Denethor, Imrahil, Faramir, Boromir, Ainaelin, and Adrahil  
**Prompt:** 44: Love, I get so lost, sometimes; days pass, and this emptiness fill my heart  
**Word Count:** 1956  
**Rating:** PG  
**Summary:** Life's no more than a sandcastle built against the rising tide. Everything goes back to the sea. The only thing is how you decide to build it.  
**Author's Notes:** Not my characters. Personally, I follow Imrahil's methods. Based as much upon my favorite Imrahil canon quote as the prompt:

_"Then you would have us retreat to Minas Tirith, or Dol Amroth, or to Dunharrow, and sit there like children on sand-castles when the tide is flowing?"_ - The Last Debate, p. 189 in my copy of RotK.

Dang, cut my laptop off wireless capability for a week and I come up with some pretty long one-shots. It's not my longest without a scene break ever, but it's the second-longest piece I've published yet.

* * *

In the end, when everything else was at risk, it ended up being the little things that destroyed her. It had only been a bit of shell, after all. The boys had collected hundreds over various trips to Dol Amroth. But Faramir had handed it to her specially, intending it for her jewelry box. The delicate spiral was a dark rainbow of purple, crimson, and deep blue, hardly larger than the four-year-old's hand, and rare in the fact that it was perfectly unchipped. It had barely even been scoured by the salty waves that had washed it ashore to reveal its lighter shades of freckled red and cornflower. Faramir had been quite pleased with himself, especially after testing the shell and declaring that he could hear the ocean in this one.

He had brought it to his mother, insisting that she try it as well. "Now you can always hear the sea," Faramir had declared proudly.

Finduilas had made a show of gravely holding the small shell up to her ear and listening, nodding to her younger son with a smile. "'Tis a worthy gift, Faramir of Gondor. I shall treasure it, since it came from your hand." She had wrapped it carefully and pocketed it, before leading him back to where his brother, father, and uncle carefully considered the defenses of their sandy citadel. Imrahil looked to have been more interested in the castle than Boromir was, probably because the Dol Amrothi was eagerly looking forward to the day when he would be helping his own child reinforce sea grass-and-shell battlements against the unstoppable force of the waves. It wouldn't be long now; Ainaelin had sent word of her pregnancy just before they had arrived for that visit.

At the time, Finduilas had found the sight of her brother and husband very amusing. There they were, two of the most powerful men in Gondor crouching in the sand beside her little boy with their shirtsleeves rolled up, tunics loosened, shoes discarded, and sand all over the prince's knees and elbows. All three were discussing the relative merits of plain wet sand versus kelp reinforcement and whether it was better to pack tightly or dribble the sand out as it would fall.

"But it falls over that way, Uncle Immy!" Boromir insisted.

"Yes, but it makes for thicker walls. And once you know where the weaknesses are, you know where to add more sand." Imrahil let another handful of wet sand slide through his fingers, adding a layer of filigree to the thick wall.

"You simply do not pack it tightly enough in the bucket," Denethor argued, helping his son to delicately remove said tool from another mountain of sand.

"You are saying that a man of Dol Amroth does not know how to make a sandcastle? Finny, I need your help defending the family honor from this inlander!" Imrahil called to his approaching sister. Laughing, Finduilas adjusted her skirts and knelt between the arguing parties.

"I believe it works best if you build it up by hand," she said, scooping wet sand from their extended trench and packing up a wall of her own. Faramir put a finger into it, tracing looping patterns that made sense to a four-year-old.

Their nine-year-old architectural advisor shook his head, reaching for his little brother's arm. "It'll fall down if you pick at it, Faramir," Boromir warned.

"But it ought to look pretty," the youngest persisted, pressing murder-holes into the ramparts. "It's better if it looks pretty." Like Imrahil's, part of the wall collapsed under the stress, and Finduilas helped the boys to build it back up.

"I think it's better if it holds up. They're pretty with shells and then it's even stronger. See?" Boromir pushed a sun-bleached clamshell into the wall and poked at it. Faramir, unwilling to listen to his brother's advice, pushed it harder, knocking down the wall and burying his brother's shell in the resulting mess.

"The sea'll get it anyway. I want it pretty," Faramir said petulantly. Boromir sighed, wandering back over to where his father knelt by their earlier walls, at the edge of the shade. Imrahil had distracted his younger nephew, seeing a potential convert to the sand-dribbling method, so Finduilas had been able to follow her older son over to her husband and the family's shaded retreat, where a pregnant Ainaelin had been watching the goings-on with an amused eye.

"He's right, you know, Mama. But I want to keep it standing as long as possible," Boromir confided to Finduilas.

"You're never going to find surety in sandcastles, darling," she said, wrapping an arm about her discontent eldest. "The sea is the only thing that will last out here. It's always changing, but it's always been there, and will be so long after we've all returned to it."

"Everything goes back to the sea?" Boromir cocked his head, peering out towards the horizon.

"Aye. Not even the Dark Lord could ever tame Ulmo's lands."

"But the Valar, surely…" Boromir argued. "And Minas Tirith isn't anywhere near the sea. She'll stand forever."

Finduilas shaded her eyes, peering out towards the ocean. "They await us on the other side. And no, Minas Tirith isn't near the sea, but she stands on the Anduin. That great river runs all the way from the furthest ends of Gondor to right here, where its mouth speaks to the ocean. And through that river, even Minas Tirith might have some contact with the sea. That's how your father first came here, you know."

"I leave you with your brother for mere moments and you talk behind my back? What are we to do with you, wife?" Strong arms snaked about her waist, and Boromir, still reflecting on their conversation, had been too bemused to fully decry his parents' behavior, though the boy was quick to take shelter with his aunt, away from his over-affectionate elders. Finduilas noticed traces of sand on her husband's breeches as well, although Denethor had been more thorough about brushing himself off than Imrahil had. "You were right, Fin. This trip has been good for all of us," Denethor murmured, kissing her cheek.

"I worry that even when you are designing sandcastles with Imrahil, you work too hard, Denethor," she replied, touching his cheek. "It's not healthy."

"I would thank you not to comment on my advancing age when your father threatened to join us today," her husband said acerbically.

"I believe that threat was more of a challenge to you in order to insure that you came out with us. Tell me; if you had known that he would back out of this family holiday, would you not have joined him in that stuffy council room?" Finduilas asked.

Denethor glanced back towards the palace. "I shouldn't leave him alone. I've shirked enough duties in the last half hour alone."

"Oh no you don't, sir," Finduilas rounded on her husband. "We get little enough time together as it is, and we arranged for you to have this morning off beforehand. Father is not a frail, helpless old man, and he was out here getting fresh air before the sun rose. He takes daily walks for that. You, however, are likely to be at a desk or conference table from before dawn until an hour when no sane woman could lie awake waiting for you at night."

"Nevertheless, I seem to recall a warm welcome or two when I turn in." Denethor said, smiling and putting an arm back around her.

She relaxed, feeling that steady heartbeat in counterpoint to the ocean's roar. "I think madness must run in my family. We do insane things for the men we love."

His nose dipped into her curls, loosened and tangled by the sea winds. "Hmm. Would you care to see what insanity we might find in a nearby grotto that a young lady of my acquaintance introduced me to?"

Unable to help herself, Finduilas giggled, looking up to check their sons before answering. Faramir and Imrahil were still absorbed in castle building; although it appeared from the pinkish tone to the dark-haired boy's skin that their architectural days were numbered. Boromir appeared to be content sitting with his aunt, questioning her about what would happen if – horror of horrors – the baby cousin turned out to be a girl.

"My Lord Steward," she said, placing one hand upon her hip in a conscious parody of her stance as he had first seen her, "I am a well-born married woman, and mother of two fine boys. Whatever gave you the impression that I might accompany you to such a place of dishonorable deeds?"

"Fathering those two fine boys," he whispered in return, his smile widening. "Boromir?" Denethor called. "As the most responsible individual left here, I'm placing you in charge until your mother and I get back."

"Yes, sir!" Boromir said, his face serious until his mother winked at him.

"Where are you going? When will you come back? Can I come, too?" Faramir asked, abandoning the small mountain range he and his uncle had completed.

"Sweetheart, your Papa and I are going for a walk. We'll be back soon, but you need to stay with Auntie Ainaelin under the shade. You're nearly as red as a cooked lobster, little one!" Finduilas reached down to hug her younger son, mindful of sensitive skin.

"I'm all right," Faramir insisted. "I want to stay with you, Mama." Finduilas, still kneeing with her baby boy, looked up at her husband, feeling torn.

"Faramir! Come quick! I think I saw a seagull on its nest!" Boromir, tiring of inactivity, darted out to the rescue.

Denethor went to one knee beside his wife. "The sooner you go rub on more salve, the sooner you can join your brother," he told Faramir, touching his son's arm, and Finduilas's shoulder beneath.

Raising his head sheepishly from the hollow of his mother's neck, Faramir looked up to where his brother had begun to scare up the gulls that scavenged the coast. "All right," he said. "But come back soon. I love you, Mama. Love you, too, Papa."

Denethor, to those who knew him well, was having extreme difficulties in hiding a grin as he bowed his head to his son. "We shall, Faramir; don't worry."

"And we love you, too, sweetheart." Finduilas released him with a final kiss. "Listen to the sea, and it will seem like no time at all."

Indeed, her time spent listening to the sea had always been too short. Despite her son's best intentions, no shell seemed to hold a candle to the rush of waves that drove her blood. The next best thing was the sound of her husband's heartbeat, as he laid breathing peacefully next to her. The rise and fall of his chest against hers could mimic the tides she had been so accustomed to, but even this comfort was pulled away from her, swept away by the current that was duty and the undertow that was Sauron. And without Denethor and the sea, there would be nothing for the tide pool that was Finduilas's fea to do but dry up under the harsh mountain sun and unpleasant, lonely darkness. She held the shells her sons had found to her ear, and the great conchs her brother sent, and what finds she had made of her own, but none of them seemed to reflect more than the wailing winds from the East.

Finduilas walked outside with the remains of Faramir's shell in her hands, overlooking the river and remembering what she had told Boromir last year. _It all went back to the ocean, eventually…_ Piece by piece, she dropped the shattered spiral over the balcony rail.


End file.
